Three out of four Coconut Grove voters helped Mayor-Elect Eileen Higgins make history this week as the first woman to reach the City of Miami’s highest elected office.
Miami Mayor-Elect Eileen Higgins ran up huge margins in Coconut Grove’s nine voting precincts this week, helping her win a landslide victory over former Miami City Manager Emilio Gonzalez in Tuesday’s runoff election.
With fellow Democrat Ken Russell out of the race, Higgins captured three out of every four votes cast in Coconut Grove, increasing her share of the local vote total from 37% in November, when 13 candidates were on the ballot, to 73% on Tuesday.
Higgins won 59% of the vote citywide, beating Gonzalez by 19 percentage points.
Higgins did especially well in the West Grove, at voting precincts in Virrick Park and Christ Episcopal Church. Higgins captured 80% of the vote at those four precincts.
In the South Grove, where residents vote at Plymouth Congregational Church, Higgins captured 73% of the vote. At City Hall’s two precincts, Higgins led with 75% of the vote, while at Vizcaya in North Grove – her weakest showing – Higgins took 63% of the vote.
Higgins, 61, a former Miami-Dade County commissioner, is the first woman to be elected mayor in Miami, and the first Democrat to win the office in nearly three decades. She will replace Mayor Francis Suarez when she is sworn in on December 18.
Although the Miami mayor’s race is officially non-partisan, both campaigns leaned into their party affiliations during the runoff, a shift driven in part by several high-profile endorsements. President Donald Trump endorsed Gonzalez, and Ruben Gallego, the Democratic senator from Arizona, campaigned with Higgins in Miami.
Those endorsements made headlines and likely helped to boost voter participation in what was expected to be a low-turnout election.
In fact, just as many voters cast a ballot in the runoff race on Tuesday (37,496) as in the November general election (37,822). Voter turnout in both elections was 21%.
Gonzalez doubled his vote total (15,097 vs. 7,258 in November) but it wasn’t nearly enough to catch Higgins, who won 22,142 votes on Tuesday night, according to the unofficial results posted online by the county’s election supervisor.
On the campaign trail, both candidates had promised to bring change to City Hall and pursue a reform agenda, if elected.
Notably, Higgins endorsed two of the reforms proposed by organizers of the Stronger Miami petition drive – the addition of four new seats on the City Commission, and a shift in the city’s election calendar to even-numbered years.
Gonzalez had expressed reservations about both proposals.
Miami voters had embraced change in the November general election – approving lifetime term limits, mandatory charter review, and new guardrails to prevent political gerrymandering – and they chose Higgins on Tuesday to be their change agent.
Higgins had promised voters that she would work full-time as mayor – with no outside employment – and give up one year of her four-year term to accommodate the shift to even-numbered election years.
If that happens, Higgins will be up for reelection in 2028, not 2029.
Higgins also met with City Manager Art Noriega – whom she plans to replace – before the election and asked him to find office space for her at the city’s administrative building downtown, where most employees work. Miami’s mayor has traditionally worked out of City Hall at Dinner Key Marina.
“Let me be clear, things are going to change,” Higgins told Jim Defede of CBS 4 Miami in a televised interview on November 25. “We are going to run a city that treats our residents like they are our customers, not like enemies of the state.”
On Tuesday night, she doubled down on that promise in her victory speech.
“We will cut red tape, repair what’s broken, and modernize City Hall so it finally serves you,” she told a crowd of supporters at The Miami Woman’s Club.
In Tuesday’s other race, restaurant manager Rolando Escalona won 53% of the vote to capture the District 3 seat on the Miami City Commission. Escalona defeated Frank Carollo, the brother of outgoing Commissioner Joe Carollo. The Carollo brothers, first Frank and then Joe, had held the seat for 16 continuous years.
